By moonlight there's way... FOR REBELLION!Here, the world has gone astray... REVOLUTION!Now, the time has come to pray... HALLELUJAH!Deep, inside our minds we wait... FOR REBELLION!Here in dreamland we will not obey the masters...— Rebellion in Dreamland

Gamma Ray is a power metal band from north Germany, founded by former Helloween guitarist, singer, and songwriter Kai Hansen.

In 1988, after four years with his former band, guitarist and songwriter Kai Hansen decided, for reasons that are still the subject of much debate, to leave the band. Hansen claimed that Helloween had become too big for him to handle, although the group's troubles with financial issues and the record company most likely played a part as well. He proceeded to do some studio work with Blind Guardian. Eventually, Hansen decided to form his own project with long-time friend Ralf Scheepers from Tyran Pace. This two-man project grew into a four-man band with the addition of Uwe Wessel (bass) and Mathias Burchard (drums). Thus was Gamma Ray born, bearing a sound understandably close to that of Hansen's former band, Helloween.

One of notable features is that their style is very non-uniform , thus sometimes, e.g. Insanity and Genius but not Power Plant will be to one's taste, or vice versa. This was especially noticeable in the first five albums, which had at least one member different from preceding album, but the style still changes with each album.

Examples

open/close all folders

Song tropes

Audience Participation Song: "Heavy Metal Universe", from Powerplant, is transformed into pure pantomime live, with the audience being divided into thirds to sing various sections, along with a call-back section that keeps getting higher and longer until Kai is the only person in the room who can do it without dying. "Blood Religion" and "To The Metal" are following the same path.

Bowdlerisation: "Your TÝrn Is Over", from Insanity & Genius, has the following lines in the booklet:

The X of Y: Mostly between Land Of The Free and No World Order, plenty of titles such as "Wings of Destiny", the eponymous "Land of the Free", "The Guardians of Mankind" and "The Heart of the Unicorn".

Misc tropes (videos and other stuff)

I Am the Band: Kai is the band's Dave Mustaine, as he's the one who compose almost every song of the band, and is the most recognizable member of it.

Futuristic Pyramid: Heading For Tomorrow, Somewhere Out In Space, No World Order and Land Of The Free II, among the examples.

The digipack version of Land of the Free II subverts this, as it proudly proclaims "Limited First Edition" on the cover, yet it doesn't have anything to be limited for. Technically, it represents the first pressing of the album and is a way to tell apart the first and second/third/etc. pressings of LOTFII, despite having no functional difference.

To The Metal, on the other hand, plays this straight, offering up a limited hand-signed version with CD and vinyl that went out of print Short As Hell afterwards.

Long Title: The live album "Hell Yeah! The Awesome Foursome! (And the finnish keyboardist who didn't want to wear his Donald Duck costume) - Live In Montreal!"

Mascot: Fangface, who appears on their album covers, as well as the cover of the first Helloween album and EP.

New Sound Album: "Empire of the Undead", which has far more of a thrash metal -feel than the previous albums.

Recycled IN SPACE!: To some extent, the band themselves, having started off with often very political themes to their music and then gradually transformed into sci-fi theming by the time Somewhere Out in Space was released. That continued for a few albums and then dropped away again. Considering that some members changed after each album on their first through fifth, it's not so surprising. Iron Savior could also be considered a space-themed brother band to Gamma Ray, having had fully three quarters of Gamma Ray's membership in it at one point.

The Rival: Helloween. Originally not on very friendly terms, the bands now tour and even play encores together.

Shout-Out: The booklet designer for To The Metal must be a Warcraft/World of Warcraft player, given the use of the same font as the menus and even the yellow and white scheme of such.

TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy